The durability of gas turbine engines is strongly dependent on the component temperatures. For the combustor and turbine airfoils and endwalls, film cooling is used extensively to reduce component temperatures. Film cooling is a cooling method used in virtually all of today's aircraft turbine engines and in many power-generation turbine engines and yet has very difficult phenomena to predict. The interaction of jets-in-crossflow, which is representative of film cooling, results in a shear layer that leads to mixing and a decay in the cooling performance along a surface. This interaction is highly dependent on the jet-to-crossflow mass and momentum flux ratios. Film-cooling performance is difficult to predict because of the inherent complex flowfields along the airfoil component surfaces in turbine engines. Film cooling is applied to nearly all of the external surfaces associated with the airfoils that are exposed to the hot combustion gasses such as the leading edges, main bodies, blade tips, and endwalls. In a review of the literature, it was found that there are strong effects of freestream turbulence, surface curvature, and hole shape on the performance of film cooling. Film cooling is reviewed through a discussion of the analyses methodologies, a physical description, and the various influences on film-cooling performance.

Gas Turbine Film Cooling

Film cooling is widely used to protect modern gas turbine blades and vanes from the ever increasing inlet temperatures. Film cooling involves a very complex turbulent flow-field, the characterization of which is necessary for reliable and economical design. Several experimental studies have focused on gas turbine blade, vane and end-wall film cooling over the past few decades. Measurements of heat transfer coefficients, film cooling effectiveness values and heat flux ratios using several different experimental methods have been reported. The emphasis of this current review is on the Pressure Sensitive Paint (PSP) mass transfer analogy to determine the film cooling effectiveness. The theoretical basis of the method is presented in detail. Important results in the open literature obtained using the PSP method are presented, discussing parametric effects of blowing ratio, momentum ratio, density ratio, hole shape, surface geometry, free-stream turbulence on flat plates, turbine blades, vanes and end-walls. The PSP method provides very high resolution contours of film cooling effectiveness, without being subject to the conduction error in high thermal gradient regions near the hole.

/pdf/turbine-blade-film-cooling-using-psp-technique-3dy1cnrzkt.pdf

Turbine blade film cooling using psp technique

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00803384/document

Development and assessment of a coupled strategy for conjugate heat transfer with Large Eddy Simulation: Application to a cooled turbine blade

An experimental study was conducted to investigate the film cooling performance on the suction side of a first-stage turbine vane. Tests were conducted on a nine times scale vane model at density ratios of DR = 1.1 and 1.6 over a range of blowing conditions, 0.2 ≤ M ≤ 1.5 and 0.05 ≤ I ≤ 1.2. Two different mainstream turbulence intensity levels, Tu∞ =0.5 and 20 percent, were also investigated. The row of coolant holes studied was located in a position of both strong curvature and strong favorable pressure gradient. In addition, its performance was isolated by blocking the leading edge showerhead coolant holes. Adiabatic effectiveness measurements were made using an infrared camera to map the surface temperature distribution. The results indicate that film cooling performance was greatly enhanced over holes with a similar 50 deg injection angle on a flat plate. Overall, adiabatic effectiveness scaled with mass flux ratio for low blowing conditions and with momentum flux ratio for high blowing conditions. However, for M < 0.5, there was a higher rate of decay for the low density ratio data. High mainstream turbulence had little effect at low blowing ratios, but degraded performance at higher blowing ratios.

Scaling of Performance for Varying Density Ratio Coolants on an Airfoil With Strong Curvature and Pressure Gradient Effects

This paper presents the first experimental measurements on an engine representative nozzle guide vane, of a new film-cooling hole geometry, a convergingslot-hole or console. The patented console geometry is designed to improve the heat transfer and aerodynamic performance of turbine vane and rotor blade cooling systems. These experiments follow the successful validation of the console design in low-speed flat-plate tests described in Part 1 of this paper. Stereolithography was used to manufacture a resin model of a transonic, engine representative nozzle guide vane in which seven rows of previously tested fan-shaped film-cooling holes were replaced by four rows of consoles. This vane was mounted in the annular vane ring of the Oxford cold heat transfer tunnel for testing at engine Reynolds numbers, Mach numbers and coolant to mainstream momentum flux ratios using a heavy gas to simulate the correct coolant to mainstream density ratio. Heat transfer data were measured using wide-band thermochromic liquid crystals and a modified analysis technique. Both surface heat transfer coefficient and the adiabatic cooling effectiveness were derived from computer-video records of hue changes during the transient tunnel run. The cooling performance, quantified by the heat flux at engine temperature levels, of the console vane compares favourably with that of the previously tested vane with fan-shaped holes. The new console film-cooling hole geometry offers advantages to the engine designer due to a superior aerodynamic efficiency over the fan-shaped hole geometry. These efficiency measurements are demonstrated by results from midspan traverses of a four-hole pyramid probe downstream of the nozzle guide vane.

A Converging Slot-Hole Film-Cooling Geometry—Part 2: Transonic Nozzle Guide Vane Heat Transfer and Loss

The effects of injection rate and strength of curvature on film cooling performance of gas injected through a row of holes on a convex surface is studied. Comparisons are made to film cooling of concave and flat surfaces. Three different relative strengths of curvature (ratio of radius of curvature to radius of injection hole), two density ratios (0.95 and 2.0), and a wide range of blowing rates (0.3 to 2.7) are considered. A foreign gas injection technique (mass transfer analogy) is used. The strength of curvature was controlled by varying the injection hole diameter. At low blowing rates, film cooling is more effective on the convex surface than on a flat or a concave surface. The cross stream pressure gradient present in curved flows tends to push the jet into the convex wall. As the injection rate is increased, normal and tangential jet momentum promote lift-off from the convex surface, thereby lowering performance. In contrast, previous studies show that on a concave surface, tangential jet momentum, flow instabilities, and blockage improve performance on a concave surface as blowing rate is increased.Copyright © 1990 by ASME

The Influence of Curvature on Film Cooling Performance

Two-dimensional behavior of film cooling jets on concave surfaces.

Comportement bidimensionnel d'un jet sur une surface concave dans le cas du refroidissement par film d'une aube de turbine

S. G. Schwarz

Papers

The Influence of Curvature on Film Cooling Performance

Two-dimensional behavior of film cooling jets on concave surfaces.

The two-dimensional behavior of film cooling jets on concave surfaces

The two-dimensional behavior of film cooling jets on concave surfaces